· Public charity
Bowdoin College
It is the mission of the college to engage students of uncommon promise in an intense full-time education of their minds, exploration of their creative faculties, and development of their social and leadership abilities in a four-year course of study and residence that concludes with a baccalaureate degree in the liberal arts.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 5 grants below total $685,630 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $71,645,000 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $70,959,370 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $8k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $72k
- $250k+1 grant · $606k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TOWN OF BRUNSWICK | $606,230 |
| BRUNSWICK DOWNTOWN ASSOCIATION | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $21,900 |
| TEDFORD HOUSING | $20,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF MID COAST MAINE | $7,500 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 2% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +60% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 1 since wound down.
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- TOTOWN OF BRUNSWICK9× · 2017–2025 · $4.1M
- BDBrunswick Downtown Association9× · 2017–2025 · $167k · revenue +60%
- IGIndividual grant recipient9× · 2017–2025 · $142k
Funded once
- TUTHE UNITED CHURCH OF CHRISTone grant, 2023 · $50k
- NANATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLEone grant, 2021 · $45k · revenue -2%
- RFResources for Organizing and Social Changeone grant, 2021 · $37k · revenue +15%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
Maine Media Workshops & College educates and inspires visual artists and storytellers to achieve their creative potential. We provide lifelong learning opportunities for those pursuing the fine arts and media-related professions. We are…
Maine & Company is a private, non-profit business development sales organization. Its purpose is to improve Maine's success in attracting new business and expanding and retaining existing business by providing a focused, statewide sales…
The mission of the Maine Development Foundation is to foster sustainable, long-term economic growth for Maine. Its programs stimulate new ideas, help develop Maine's leaders, and provide common ground for solving problems and advancing…
The Maine Philanthropy Center (MPC) is the state's leading resource that provides opportunity, leadership and support to advance the effectiveness of philanthropy in Maine and its ability to make a meaningful difference. It helps grant…
Cei integrates financing, small business and industry expertise, and policy solutions to grow a vibrant future for people and communities in maine and rural regions.
The maine humanities council (the council) is a not-for profit corporation that is funded primarily by grants from the national endowment for the humanities (neh) and contributions from the public. the council conducts public programs in…
Our mission is to strengthen the leadership, voice, and organizational effectiveness of our state's nonprofit organizations so they can better enrich the quality of community and personal life in Maine.
To promote and ensure workers' rights
The manufacturers association of maine is dedicated to promoting and strengthening manufacturing in maine as an informative voice for the state's manufacturing community.
To deliver fearless, independent, citizen-supported, nonpartisan journalism that informs mainers about the issues impacting our state and inspires them to take action. through investigative and in-depth stories, we engage readers to…
The Maine Jewish Film Festival celebrates filmmakinginspiring conversation through the lens of global Jewish experience. Innovative programming invites a diverse statewide audience into the dialogue. Many of our programs include guest…
The maine center for economic policy provides citizens, policymakers, advocates, and media with credible and rigorous economic analysis that advances economic justice and prosperity for all maine people.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Naacp Empowerment Programs Inc and the most unlike its peers is Smithsonian Institution. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
19 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 19 of the 24 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds Brunswick Downtown Association ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF MID COAST MAINE INC ↗
- Who funds TEDFORD HOUSING ↗
- Who funds MAINE INITIATIVESINC ↗
- Who funds Resources for Organizing and Social Change ↗
- Who funds MAINE INSIDE OUT ↗
- Who funds BRUNSWICK DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds CREATIVE PORTLAND CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds Maine Community Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds SIX RIVERS YOUTH SPORTS INC ↗
- Who funds PEJEPSCOT HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds Senator George J Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute ↗
- Who funds Dempsey Center for Quality Cancer Care ↗
- Who funds NAACP EMPOWERMENT PROGRAMS INC ↗
- Who funds NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INC ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Maine Community Foundation Inc · Sam L Cohen Foundation · Elmina B Sewall Foundation · The Alfred M Senter Fund Trust · Maine Health Access Foundation Inc · John T Gorman Foundation · Impactassetsinc · Onion Foundation · Td Charitable Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Bowdoin College funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.